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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    Country: United States

    Default Donmetal vault doors

    From roughly 1921 to 1930 Mosler marketed a vault door construction they called Donsteel (or, sometimes, Donmetal). The door was a sandwich of steel with a copper layer that would draw away the heat of a cutting torch, making it an ineffective tool. This was briefly discussed in another thread ("Old NYC banks get a new life") but I thought I'd start a new thread since Donsteel was just a tangent to the original thread.

    I ran across a 1949 advertisement for Conoco motor oil that references Donsteel, but not by name, as an analogy to the extra protection of their oil. It seems strange since Mosler hadn't been marketing Donsteel for nearly twenty years but somebody in Conoco's advertising department must have been impressed by the idea. Maybe he was an old safecracker.

    Here is the image from eBay of the ad (the eBay item ID is 230750362144 though it is about to expire), plus an example door at the Courtyard/Marriott in San Diego.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	San Diego Marriott Mosler 47,000 pounds.jpg 
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ID:	6439Click image for larger version. 

Name:	San Diego Marriott Mosler Donsteel 4.jpg 
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ID:	6440
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 1949 Donsteel reference.jpg  

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